Family Matters
by fantacination
Summary: He smiles at her and decides that he doesn't see Beast's eyes light up in hope. He can't help it anymore than she can not see him off, this small scrap of a bad habit. Joker-pov, one-sided ? Beast/Joker


**Title: **Family Matters*

**Author:** fantacination

**Rating:** PG

**Fandom:** Kuroshitsuji

**Character/Pairings**: Joker-centric, unrequited(?) Beast/Joker

**Word Count:** 1254, give or take

* tentative title

* * *

It starts out as a game between children.

"Ed can be m' brother and Millie can be big sis," Ellen says, her eyes bright in pretend-wonder. She's the smallest, the youngest, given to imagining, still. None of them have the heart to deny her ideals. Her breath mists up in front of her as she walks around their back alley. It's a cold winter but they might get by, if John and Beth, the two oldest, get their wages from the factory and old Mrs. Smith doesn't mind them in her unused cellar. Sometimes, it is just enough.

John smiles when Ellen turns to look at him. "Wot, nothin' for me?" he asks cheerfully. But Ellen grins back, gap-toothed and her nose smudged with London dirt. She hands him his well-worn cap and tells him "Yer m'dad," she says a little shyly and adds, "ya gotta put up wiv mum."

He laughs at that, jamming his cap carelessly onto his head so the straw-like orange hair sticks up at the back, "Didja hear that, Beth?"

Beth scowls and re-adjusts John's cap, unknotting and re-knotting the tatty scarf for good measure. "Somebody's gotta take care of you lot," she says but smiles for Ellen, sweet and all of three.

Grinning, John pecks her cheek and calls her 'missus', darting away before Beth can punch him for the sentiment. The rest of the children laugh and laugh, even with the cold and the smoke and the dirt. They're family. All the family they have.

But factories are dangerous things, filled with machine monsters that eat up children's limbs. They only manage to survive long enough to meet Him.

All of them, but Ellen.

----------

John drops a kiss on her forehead, right at the edge where the black hair starts, before leaning back in preparation for the scolding. He's going to go up to the manor, to Father's, and Beth, as always, is here to smarten up his clothes and see him go.

Beth doesn't move to strike him (and he knows by now, it'll hurt a bit more than when they'd been on the streets). Instead, she looks down and hesitates.

"You don't think them nob- the Baron-" She still struggles with the new corrected speech they've been taught, just a little.

"Father," John corrects gently, "I'm sure he ain't callin' little ol' me for much," he continues, letting his voice soften into the less stiff accent of their childhood. He places his good arm; his flesh arm around Beth's shoulders, and tries to give her comfort because they're family and she's Beth. And she'll always be the one who worries for them all. Just like he'll always be the one responsible for them all.

-----------

The row of tiny buttons is a little hard to do with only one fully flexible hand, but Father has sent this outfit personally. And it never does well to not do as Father wishes. Not when Father has given them so much. Cursing when the last button slips from his ceramic fingers, he almost doesn't hear the tent flap open, the sounds of a rowdy circus preparing for a show pushing past.

Joker looks up and his face breaks into a smile when Beast walks in like so many other times, looking every inch the exotic tigress tamer in her circus uniform. The black leather hugs her curves in a way that will set men staring and their wives doling dark looks. Leather strings strain at her bosom and fishnet garters draw taut over her thighs, but more than anything she is beautiful. So beautiful- for the tilt of her chin and the strength in her eyes, for the resilience of her will and the gentleness of her hands.

"Great timing," Joker tells her cheerfully, "Couldn't give me a hand, wouldja? The show's in ten and I'm havin'-"

Beast won't meet his eyes and her right hand clutches her left arm as she studies the cleared dirt of the tent floor.

_Ah_, he thinks, and somewhere, the small touches and glances add up into a story with no end, a story that cannot have an end.

"John-I,"

"I'm Joker now, and you're Beast," he tells her, and reaches out to smooth the wisp of dark hair that falls into her warm, too-bright eyes.

Beast catches his wrist, her grip as strong as any animal tamer's must be, and with only the slightest tremor, leans her warm cheek into the curve of his palm. Her lashes are long, casting a shadow on her cheeks, the tawny light of a candle softening on her face.

And for once, just once he allows himself a wish for other things. Just one very selfish wish.

But it's a moment fleeting and Joker has duties to juggle; a show to put on.

So Joker leans down and brushes his lips against a corner of Beast's eye. "For luck," he whispers, and straightens to go.

"Joker…"

He smiles at her and decides that he doesn't see Beast's eyes light up in hope. He can't help it anymore than she can not see him off, this small scrap of a bad habit.

-----------

Things change and they don't.

Sometimes Joker wonders if they had been better off dying in the cold instead of… But of course not. This way Dagger and Doll and all the others have a future, some day. This way, they are alive and well and fed. Three more things than any of them had, so many winters ago.

The night is chilly when he steps out, cloak and scarf wrapped around him. And he really should have expected, in the way of so many other things, that Beast would come to see him go.

But here she begs him to stay. To run. To stop. And he can't. He knows more of Father than any of them have seen. His delusions and his descent into insanity. He knows how he will send out his agents and track them down. How he will hire assassins to kill them as they flee because they are expendable, in the end, but too knowledgeable to live.

So when Beast holds onto him tightly, so frail, suddenly, so scared, he turns around and gently breaks her grip, holding her away.

"We decided to protect our most precious thing." _Our family, all the family we have. _

"Did you forget? We can't turn back now." He is the father, who shoulders the world.

She'll understand. He knows she will. But for now he can only smile gently when her face crumples and takes off his thick scarf, soft wool still warm, to wind about her. Because this is for Beth, strong and proud.

This is for all of them.

For a moment, he hovers in front of her, looking at the woman he might've loved more dearly in any other lifetime, and pulls away, this time.

"Staying up late isn't good for your health," he murmurs instead.

"Joker!"

"Good night," he calls back, still smiling as he walks away. There's a coach that he might catch to town and the station if he is on time. He will arrive at an inn near Father's mansion in two days.

He doing the right thing for them, he knows. He's never going to let them starve again.

But he can still feel her, her warmth and her gaze, long after they can see each other in the dark, and he wonders why breaking a bad habit feels like losing his other hand.

* * *

**A/N:** Theoretically for the Bad Habits prompt at the contest comm., but I decided not to enter it. It's also written while trying to get out of another fic slump, but I think the tired tone of that worked ok for this. There's definitely something off about this ficlet that I can sense but I haven't really figured out what yet… For tasuki_girl who ships these two like mad and was surprisingly very Paula Abdul about it. Just as well. I think my wallowing-mechanism is in full gear. Stupid, stupid school and stupid, stupid self-issues.


End file.
